Eighties TV Season: The Bagthorpe Saga
Continuing a series of posts about 1980s Tv series which haven't appeared here before. I was thinking of including The Bagthorpe Saga in my last post about coming-of-age dramas, but it is about the life of the Bagthorpe family rather than the characteristic transition from child to adult, so it deserves a post of its own. It is a six-episode children's show from 1981, and despite not being a coming-of-age drama did have the same effect they have on me when first broadcast: in terms of impact it really really punches well above its weight. I was fascinated by the insane Bagthorpe family, who I considered very sophisticated at the time. The series is based on a series of ten books (published between 1977 and 2001) by Helen Cresswell, also called the Bagthorpe Saga. They are about the eponymous family who are described in their Wikipedia article as 'eccentric, ultra-competitive, friendless, relentlessly self-absorbed and largely disloyal'. I was wondering how I was going t...